‘So what happened, Tyrone? While you were thinking?’ He sipped the coffee, wishing there was something stronger in it. ‘I got up and walked around the parking lot. It’s more sheltered there – it was really cold that night. I bumped my foot into this. It was in the shadow next to an empty parking bay.’ He made himself touch the bag, pushed it over to Clare. The ‘Hello Kitty’ cartoon gave its silly, mocking wave.
‘I remembered it from when she was in earlier.’ There were tears in his eyes when he looked at her. ‘She was so friendly. So pretty.’
Clare did not touch the bag. There was still the smallest chance that forensics would find something.
‘Did you find anything else?’ Clare was sure that he had looked.
Tyrone shook his head. ‘He was there again. I saw him.’
‘Who, Tyrone?’ asked Clare. Tyrone put a finger into his mouth. He tore at a strip of skin next to the nail. Blood oozed.
‘Landman. Kelvin Landman.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘He came in just as Theresa was leaving.’ He shuddered. ‘I saw him look at her. You don’t want him to look at you like that if you are a girl.’
‘Explain, Tyrone.’ Clare’s voice was urgent. She wished that Riedwaan would come. Tyrone drew a deep breath, squared his slender shoulders. ‘You remember Charnay? And her friend Cornelle? You know they worked for him? Or better to say it like this: he worked them for himself. To death.’ His voice was bitter. ‘All this trouble with the police now, with the murders. They’re everywhere. Some of the local customers are nervous, I think. All the South Africans are careful, even the Jo’burg guys. It has been affecting his business, I think.’
‘Hang on. That will be Riedwaan,’ she said, responding to the doorbell. Clare let him in and handed him a cup of coffee. Riedwaan shook hands with an anxious-looking Tyrone, then sat down.
‘Carry on, Tyrone,’ said Clare. ‘You’ll have to make a statement to the police anyway, so you may as well do it now with Inspector Faizal here.’
Tyrone was trapped, a rabbit in the headlights. ‘Theresa came in first, like I told you.’
‘Had you seen her before?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘No. She had never been in before, not while I have worked there. I asked her what her name was when I brought her order. It wasn’t busy, so I chatted. She said she was meeting her mom. Just as she was leaving, Kelvin Landman came in with those guys who are always with him.’ Tyrone swallowed with difficulty, his throat suddenly dry.
‘Did they speak to Theresa?’ asked Clare.
‘No, like I told you, they just checked her out. I don’t think she liked it because she pulled her coat tight around her when she saw them. They are not people you mess with.’
‘Then what?’ asked Clare.
‘Theresa left and I went outside to check if there was anyone else. There wasn’t, but I did see Theresa at the end of the jetty where all the yachts are moored. I waved to her, but I don’t think she saw me. When I came in, Landman was vloeking into his phone. They left quite soon after that. I was glad. I don’t think the other customers like them much.’
‘Who was Landman with?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘The only one I knew was Kenny McKenzie,’ said Tyrone. ‘He grew up near me. I stayed right out of his way.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ said Clare.
‘Did you see Theresa again?’ asked Riedwaan.
‘I didn’t. I found her bag much later. At about half past eleven, like I told you.’ He put out his hand as if to stroke the bag, but then thought better of it and his hand dropped back into his lap.
‘Why did you only come forward now?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘Why didn’t you call the police immediately, when you knew she was missing?’
Tyrone looked sullenly at Riedwaan. ‘I know those gangsters, Inspector.’ There was disdain in his voice. ‘Like you know them. You know what happens if you split.’
‘So why are you telling us at all?’
Tyrone twisted his fingers. He looked very young. ‘She was a nice girl. But I think I must go now. Thanks for the coffee.’ Tyrone stood up.
‘Wait,’ said Riedwaan, ‘I want you to take me to exactly where you found the bag.’ Riedwaan called Piet Mouton. He wanted the bag combed for hair and fibres. The pathologist cleared his schedule.
Tyrone watched Clare put on her coat and pick up her bag. Then he said, ‘Landman’s connection came back.’ His voice was thin, exhausted, now that he had unburdened himself of his secret.
‘Kenny McKenzie?’ asked Clare.
‘Not McKenzie, I don’t know his name, but he came back at about half past nine. Maybe ten. I didn’t serve him. The other barman did because I was busy. He had a scratch on his hand and he asked me for a lappie.’
Clare felt her blood chill in her veins. ‘Did you give him one?’
‘Ja, I had a clean cloth in my hand so I gave him that.’
‘What did it look like? The scratch?’
‘I don’t know. Like he’d caught his hand on a bush. Or a cat had scratched him,’ said Tyrone. ‘He didn’t stay long – just had his whiskey and then he was gone again. It was like he was looking for someone. Or something, maybe. I saw him drive away some time later when I was bringing in the outside tables. I don’t know where he was in between.’
‘What did he look like?’ asked Clare.
‘Dark hair. Tall,’ said Tyrone. ‘He looked rich.’
Riedwaan came out of the bathroom, drying his hands.
‘Have you done any checks on Otis Tohar?’ she asked.
‘No. I know the organised crime boys are keeping an eye on him. Nothing, so far.’
‘You go ahead. There’s something I want to check. Go and meet Piet. I’ll catch you later,’ said Clare.
She closed the front door behind Riedwaan before he could say anything and turned on her computer, typing in her search question, her body taut with excitement. ‘Come, come, come,’ she whispered. The French news site she was waiting for flickered to life. She checked on Lebanon first. Not even a blip, apart from a litany of unpunished honour killings. Clare felt her shoulders slump. She had been so sure. Then she tried Sierra Leone, without any real hope. But there was – an endless list of mutilations and amputations. She scrolled through them swiftly.
There it was, what she had been looking for: ‘Another young woman murdered’, she translated aloud. A French journalist posted to Sierra Leone to witness the evacuation of families of French troops had written the story. The girl’s death was bizarre even in the midst of the routine slaughter of a civil war. She was beautiful, despite the grainy distortion of the digital image. Clare was transfixed by the detail of her death. There was a picture of the girl’s broken body, the hands bound, the eyes mutilated, the legs grotesquely splayed. Clare manipulated the image, enlarging it as much as possible. Clutched between the girl’s hands was a rectangular box. Clare stared at it. A video cassette and a small, silver key.
The shrill summons of her cellphone brought Clare to her feet. ‘Hello?’ she said sharply.
‘Clare, its Rita here.’
‘Hi, did you get hold of Cathy King? Will you arrange an interview with her as soon as possible? Get hold of Riedwaan, he’s just left. We’ll have to see her later.’
‘I am with her now, sisi, but no one is going to be talking to her again.’
The strength drained out of Clare’s legs. ‘What do you mean?’ she whispered.
‘Portia Qaba, her housekeeper, called here. I tried to get Riedwaan, but his phone was off. So me and Joe Zulu came out here. Cathy King is dead. It looks like she took an overdose. Joe thinks it’s suicide. So does the pathologist – he is busy with her now.’
‘Poor woman,’ said Clare. ‘Where did you find her?’
‘In India’s room, on her bed. She must have been watching a video.’
Clare’s blood ran cold. ‘What was she watching?’ asked Clare, sure that she knew the answer.
‘It’s horrible, Clare. It was a film with her in it. H
er with Landman and her husband. Very brutal, very abusive. But there’s something very strange.’ Rita hesitated, uncertain about her intuition.
‘What?’
‘The tape was paused in mid-frame. It looked like she had paused it – you see, the remote was right by her hand. And then I looked again. More closely, at the image …’
‘What did you see?’ asked Clare, itching with impatience.
‘There’s another man there. He must be holding the camera. But you can see him reflected in the window, right at the end. I think I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know his name. Can I bring you the tape now? I just got this feeling that maybe you should talk to him too. About India. It’s so terrible, what they did to her eyes.’
‘I’ve seen that tape,’ breathed Clare. ‘Thank you, Rita, thank you.’
Clare was already in the lounge, scrabbling through the videos on top of her television. She quickly found the one she had taken from India King’s house. She pushed the cassette in, fast forwarding through the agonising humiliation of Cathy King. Yes, there it was, right at the end. The man with the camera was mirrored briefly in the plate-glass windows, his mouth slack as he watched, and filmed – mesmerised as the woman was efficiently bound. The camera moved inexorably in until the screen was filled with her face, then only her eyes. Her pupils were dilated with terror. And then, visible for the merest second, and only if you really looked, was a special effect done in post-production: a red flash, then a trickle of fluid as the blue irises were sliced through.
Clare called Riedwaan but he did not pick up. She had to move if anyone was to see Theresa Angelo alive again. Warrants and procedures would create nothing but a lethal delay, so she didn’t call the station. Clare grabbed keys and a warm jacket. She manoeuvred her car around the growing knot of people who had come to look at the elephant seal, then made her way down to Beach Road. She looked up hopefully at the penthouse suite of the old Sea Point Tower: Tohar had to be in his apartment – and Theresa had to be alive.
49
Clare was out of her car before the security guard had even stood up from the chair in his warm booth. ‘I’m meeting Mr Tohar.’ She thrust a card into the perplexed guard’s hand. Looking past him into the garage, she noticed that Tohar’s car was gone. ‘It doesn’t matter if he’s out. I’ll see Tatiana.’
He called upstairs and then nodded to Clare, ‘She’s there.’ The guard keyed in the code and the lift delivered Clare to Tohar’s flat. Clare stepped onto the plush carpet. The place was silent, apart from a faint sound down the passage.
The door was open just a crack, but Clare could see a woman moving rapidly from the cupboard to the bed and back again. She packed with the efficiency of someone used to moving out quickly and carrying their life away with them in one bag.
Clare knocked. The woman dropped a pile of shirts, her face white.
‘Tatiana?’ said Clare. She picked up a fine silk scarf and ran it between her fingers. ‘Are you going somewhere?’
‘No,’ she whispered.
Clare touched the beautiful face, its contours blurred, swollen. ‘What happened to you?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. It is nothing. I must finish my packing.’
‘Maybe I can help you.’ Clare wrote down a phone number and an address. ‘I have the feeling there are not many places where you feel safe,’ she said, handing Tatiana the piece of paper. ‘Go to Shazneem. She’ll help you without any questions.’
Tatiana turned, closed her suitcase. ‘What are you looking for?’ she asked Clare, slipping the address into her pocket.
‘Your husband,’ Clare ventured. ‘What is your cellphone number? I might need to contact you.’
‘I don’t know where he is. I am sorry. I have to go.’ Tatiana wrote the number down. She picked up the suitcase and walked towards the lift door. She pressed the button to summon it, her hand shaking. She turned to Clare. ‘I know why you want to see him.’ Clare put her foot between the lift doors, preventing them from closing. ‘You think he make those girls disappear, no?’ asked Tatiana.
‘What do you think?’ asked Clare.
‘It does not matter what I think,’ said Tatiana. ‘I don’t have papers here so I have nothing to say.’
‘Who are you afraid of?’ asked Clare. ‘Your husband?’
‘He is not my husband.’
‘Why are you here, then?’
‘I am here because I was sent here. Mr Landman send me as a present to Mr Tohar.’
‘Did you want to come here?’
Tatiana laughed. ‘What could I say? Mr Landman bring me to this country, I must do what he say. I owe him lot of money for my ticket so I must work where he tells me.’ She pressed the button for the basement. Clare stepped into the lift.
‘And now?’ asked Clare. ‘Where are you going? Back to Landman?’
‘No. I cannot,’ said Tatiana. ‘Better I die than go back.’
‘Let’s find you a taxi to take you to the shelter. Shazneem will take you in. I’ll call her.’
Clare took Tatiana’s arm and walked her briskly past the suspicious guard. He was on the phone as soon as they got into Clare’s car. She drove to the taxi rank and negotiated a price with a driver. Tatiana got into the back seat and clutched her bag against her slim body. She put her hand into her coat pocket and handed Clare a small bottle. It rattled as Clare took it. Pills. Clare opened the cap and shook a couple onto her hand.
‘What are they?’ asked Clare. There was a small R in the middle of each tablet.
‘Rohypnol,’ said Tatiana.
‘The rape drug,’ said Clare. ‘Who is it for?’
Tatiana looked down at her long painted nails. ‘Mr Landman used them for the young girls.’ Her voice was very quiet. ‘It makes it easier when they first start.’
‘Young girls where?’ asked Clare. She tried to keep the revulsion out of her voice.
Tatiana lifted her head. ‘At the Isis Club. Where I work before I come here.’ She looked away, was quiet. Then she added, so softly that Clare almost didn’t hear her, ‘Also when they make the movies.’
‘Where did you find them?’ asked Clare.
‘I find them in Mr Tohar’s coat. He come home very late. I do not see him. I just hear him. But I got up early. I find his coat lying in the sitting room. So I pick it up because he hates a mess. And those fell out.’
‘When was that?’ asked Clare.
‘Two nights ago.’ She leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. ‘We go now?’
Clare stepped back onto the pavement. Two nights ago Theresa Angelo had disappeared.
Six in the morning. Charnay Swanepoel on the promenade had been first.
Six in the evening. The time they had found Amore’s body at Graaff’s Pool.
Midnight had produced India King.
Like clockwork, one after the other. Clare immediately dialled Tatiana’s number, watching as she lifted the phone to her ear. The taxi was only a hundred metres down the road.
‘What kind of coat does Tohar wear?’ she asked.
‘A black one,’ said Tatiana. ‘Is cashmere. Very expensive from Italy.’
‘Thank you.’ Clare watched the taxi disappear behind a bus. Theresa Angelo’s broken body would turn up when the sun reached its zenith tomorrow – unless Clare got to her before anything terrible happened.
50
Clare called Riedwaan on her way home, willing him to answer. She needed him for back-up. She snapped her phone shut, killing his voice asking her to please leave a message. There was a bad taste in her mouth, and her body ached with tension that she decided to walk off on the promenade. Heavy fog had rolled in from the south-west, and the Green Point foghorn blared anxiously at passing ships. Skeletal fingers of mist were swirling off the sea, making it difficult to see more than a few metres ahead. ‘Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?’ was the percussion of Clare’s stride. She stopped to call Riedwaan again. Then cursed his voicemail and walked on along the
promenade, all the way to Clifton and back again.
It was almost dark as she heard the raised voices cut through the evening silence. The fog was disorientating, but the argument sounded as if it was coming from Three Anchor Bay, where the elephant seal, exhausted by his thousand-mile swim, had heaved himself up to rest. Clare walked towards the glow of a fire that the animal’s guard had made to keep himself warm. She could see the outline of a man, beside himself with agitation. He lunged at the guard, grabbing him by the front of his jacket and pulling him off his feet.
‘Hey!’ shouted Clare, running towards them. She went up to the guard, who had fallen back against the railing.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked him, helping him back on his feet. His attacker was swallowed by the dense fog.
‘I’m okay. I’m okay. What is his problem?’ The guard was enraged. ‘He wants to go now to the boathouse. But nobody can sail out in that swell.’
‘Who is he?’ asked Clare.
‘I don’t know. He’s a crazy man. He came earlier and he wanted to go to the boathouse. The other people who have boats also wanted to go. So I explained to them that no one can go while the elephant seal is there. Nobody. They don’t mind at all. They are happy. Except him. He says he must go. It is his right. I say rubbish. That big seal came thousands of miles to visit here. He can have some peace now until he goes back home.’ The guard poured himself some tea from his flask, added four soothing spoons of sugar and drank it down. ‘That man tells me he will phone the mayor. I point to the sign and I tell him that the mayor ordered that we close the beach for the seal. Hah!’ the guard spat, still furious.
‘When was that?’ asked Clare.
‘That was this afternoon. Then he came back now. First he tried to give me money. I said no. He asked me if I wanted more money. I said no again. I tell him he must go away. That is when he started shouting at me, saying I must let him in. He grabbed me here,’ he said, pointing to the front of his jacket.
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